Lighthouse continues to illuminate the darkness with excellent writing. ‘One Art’, by C. D. Rose, in issue 16, was very good, but ‘Smack’ by Julia Armfield in the same issue was outstanding, probably the best story to appear in the journal during 2018. I don’t know what the jellyfish represent, but I don’t care. And yet I do care about the story.
The same dimensions and format as both Lighthouse and Confingo, Doppelgänger was a new publication edited by James Hodgson. Its web site states that it aimed to publish twice a year, with six stories in each issue, three realist stories and three magical realist stories. As far as I can tell, there has been no follow-up to the first issue, dated winter/spring 2018 and featuring work by Dan Powell, Andrew Hook, Cath Barton and others. Max Dunbar takes a risk with his story, ‘The Bad Writing School’. If you’re going to satirise the teaching of creative writing, you’ve got to be pretty sure of your ability.
If I had to pick a favourite story out of all those published in horror magazine Black Static during 2018, it would be Giselle Leeb’s ‘Everybody Knows That Place’, set on a camp site, which immediately makes it pretty horrifying for me. Some people find taxidermy horrifying, whereas I’m drawn to it, and that’s one reason why I liked Sally Jubb’s ‘The Arrangement’ so much. It appears in issue 42 of Brittle Star alongside other stories, Ren Watson’s ‘Sky-sions’ (reprinted in the current volume, under another title) and Josie Turner’s ‘The Guide’, that emerged as winners in the Brittle Star short fiction competition.
A friend alerted me to the fact that Ambit, the great avant-garde arts magazine founded by novelist and consultant paediatrician Martin Bax in 1959, had recently started charging for submissions. To submit a short story used to cost nothing, unless you counted the cost of photocopying, stationery and postage (not forgetting the stamped addressed envelope); now it costs £2.50, which Ambit says is to pay for the cost of using Submittable, a service that charges Ambit a monthly fee. There are advantages to Ambit in using Submittable, editor Briony Bax tells me: it enables their editors to work wherever they are; they can respond to submissions in a timely manner; it creates a virtual office for their eight editorial readers for whom an actual office would be prohibitively expensive etc. All reasonable arguments, of course, and Bax emphasises that there is a student/unwaged category with no proof required of such status, or people may still submit by post for free.
I don’t much like this development, even as Ambit celebrates its sixtieth birthday, but I haven’t let it stop me selecting two stories from last year’s issues of the magazine: Stephen Sharp’s ‘Cuts’ from Ambit 231 (in the same issue I also liked John Saul’s ‘Tracks’) and Adam Welch’s ‘Toxic’ from Ambit 232.
Ambit is not alone. Magazines such as Ploughshares and Glimmer Train in the US have been doing it for years, and, as Rory Kinnear says as Stephen Lyons in Russell T. Davies’s post-Brexit drama Years and Years, ‘We are American. Our business is American, our culture is American. We’re certainly not European, are we?’
Also doing it is the Fiction Desk, whose £3 fee can be avoided if instead you buy one of their anthologies, the latest of which, their twelfth, is And Nothing Remains. I may not like submission charges, but that’s not contributor Alex Clark’s fault and so I will say I enjoyed her story ‘Briar Rose’, as I did her story ‘The Thief’ in Stroud Short Stories Volume 2 (Stroud Short Stories) edited by John Holland. This second volume in the series features stories read by their Gloucester-based authors at Stroud Short Stories events between 2015 and 2018. In particular I enjoyed Joanna Campbell’s ‘The Journey to Everywhere’, its exuberance of language and character reminding me of the great William Sansom.
There was no shortage of anthologies published last year, among them Unthology 10 (Unthank Books) edited by Ashley Stokes and Robin Jones – congratulations to them on reaching that milestone. The blurb on the back of Tales From the Shadow Booth Vol 2 edited by Dan Coxon describes the Shadow Booth as a ‘journal of weird and eerie fiction’, taking its inspiration from Thomas Ligotti and Robert Aickman, but nothing in it reminded me of either writer. It feels more reminiscent of The Pan Book of Horror Stories, and, speaking as someone whose first short story sale was to that long-running series, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Mark Morris, a contributor to the Shadow Booth, is the editor of New Fears 2 (Titan Books). In his introduction he acknowledges the lasting influence of un-themed horror anthologies, such as the Pan series and others. He goes on: ‘My aim with New Fears, therefore, is to bring back the un-themed horror anthology – and not as a one-off, but as an annual publication, with each volume acting as a showcase for the very best and most innovative fiction that this exhilarating genre has to offer.’ What a shame, then, that publishers Titan pulled the plug after this second volume, in which a highlight for me was Stephen Volk’s stomach-churning ‘The Airport Gorilla’, which may be narrated by a soft toy, but is extremely hard hitting.
Jez Noond’s ‘Zolitude’ drew my eye in The Cinnamon Review of Short Fiction (Cinnamon Press) edited by Adam Craig. I liked it, even if I didn’t really understand it. I sense strongly that the lack is within me and not the story. I always enjoy Courttia Newland’s stories; ‘Link’, in Everyday People – The Color of Life (Atria Books) edited by Jennifer Baker, was no exception. Ramsey Campbell led from the front in The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors (The Alchemy Press) edited by Peter Coleborn and Jan Edwards; Campbell’s ‘Some Kind of a Laugh’ is followed by a further 24 stories by a roll-call of horror writers. Standing out among the stories in Dark Lane Anthology Volume 7 (Dark Lane Books) edited by Tim Jeffreys is ‘Your Neighbour’s Packages’ by Megan Taylor, which you read with a dynamic response of mingled horror and delight, as the neighbour’s packages mount up in the protagonist’s home. You hope the packages remain unopened while the story delivers on its promise. You’re not disappointed. It’s followed by Charles Wilkinson’s ‘Time Out in December’, which could hae been called ‘Hotel Lazarus’ and could have been written by Franz Kafka.
Running a small press is a draining business in lots of ways, not least financially. Manchester’s Dostoyevsky Wannabe don’t charge a submission fee, but nor do they supply their writers with contributors’ copies. This didn’t put off the writers contributing to Manchester edited by Thom Cuell, among them Sarah-Clare Conlon and Anthony Trevelyan, whose stories, ‘Flight Path’ and ‘Repossession’, respectively, were my favourites. While I can’t help feeling that, if you’re not paying your writers, providing them with a free copy of their work is the very least you can do (co-founder Richard Brammer puts forward a case for it being more punk operation than big corporation), I love the look of Dostoyevsky Wannabe’s rapidly growing list of publications, for which credit must go to art director Victoria Brown.
Let’s stick with the north for two more anthologies published last year. Firstly, Bluemoose Books published Seaside Special: Postcards From the Edge edited by Jenn Ashworth, whose prompt for stories inspired by the coast of the north-west of England, produced a fascinating anthology with some outstanding stories. Melissa Wan’s ‘The Husband and the Wife Go to the Seaside’ is remarkable, mainly for its style and its embracing of doubt and uncertainty. Pete Kalu’s historical piece on the subject of slavery is impressive, partly for the unflinching examination of its subject matter and partly for its original approach, the story taking the form of a will being dictated. Also notable were Andrew Michael Hurley’s ‘Katy’, a missing-child story with a difference, and Carys Bray’s haunting tale about the song of the Birkdale Nightingale, or Natterjack toad.